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Multi-GPU PRIME & GPU Hot-Switching Proposal

03-16-2011, 09:30 PM

Phoronix: Multi-GPU PRIME & GPU Hot-Switching Proposal

Last week a student developer from Belgium had proposed an OpenGL 4.1 state tracker for Gallium3D to be developed this summer as part of the X.Org / Mesa involvement with the annual Google Summer of Code. Under this proposal, OpenGL 4.1 would be implemented from scratch (Mesa / Gallium3D are currently only supportive of OpenGL 2.1 with limited support for OpenGL 3.0 extensions) without any dependence on Mesa; some of the well-known Mesa developers called this too ambitious, but it's unclear if the Belgian developer will still attempt this workload. Meanwhile, a Russian student developer has just voiced two ambitious proposals: Multi-GPU PRIME support and GPU hot-switching...

Comment

Maybe it would be best to work out graphics card hot-switching for X.Org.

This would be interesting for being able to pop-in a second GPU without blowing out an existing X.Org Server or simply for dual-GPU notebooks to flip from the integrated to discrete graphics seamlessly. It's along the lines of last year's switcheroo work, but more integrated into the X.Org Server for seamless switching.

This seems the prerequisite for multi-GPU.

And this seems something that should also require the most work in the Linux kernel itself. I find it comparable to Mode switching (UMS vs. KMS).

Comment

Hotswitching looks like a good starting point to make the software ready for gpu switching. You have the advantage that the software will be able to tested very thouroughly by removing graphic cards physically.

Making applications run on multiple ones and migrate is just something that can only come after this kind of things. Because no switching no PRIME.